Spraying for Dutch Elm Disease

[GPCharles]

The air raid warning thread got me thinking about the 1960s when they would go down our street in GPP with big trucks mounted with a huge sprayer spraying something up into the elm trees trying to save them from Dutch Elm.

We would lie face down on the grass of our front lawns as they were spraying the trees - real smart!

All the elms on my parent's property are long gone.

[jcole]

The air raid warning thread got me thinking about the 1960s when they would go down our street in GPP with big trucks mounted with a huge sprayer spraying something up into the elm trees trying to save them from Dutch Elm.

We would lie face down on the grass of our front lawns as they were spraying the trees - real smart!

All the elms on my parent's property are long gone.

And we wonder about the increase in cancers. We used to run around under the trees while they sprayed.

[Bobl]

We burned piles of raked leaves at the edge of the street, often roasting marshmallows. Loved the "aroma". Unsophisticated detrimental fun.

[Ray1936]

When I think of the street 'tunnels' the huge elm trees created on Detroit streets, I could just cry to think of the demise of those wonderful trees. For newbies, the Dutch Elm disease was caused by a European beetle that fell in love with those trees even more than I, and burrowed under the bark to eat fresh wood. The spraying had minimal results in killing the bug. I guess they came in via shipping when the St. Lawrence Canal opened....or so I was led to believe.

And....Bobl......yup, there was nothing better than the smell of burning leaves in October, was there? Of course, you couldn't see more than a hundred feet down any street about that time due to it, but what did kids care? I sure didn't.

Anyway, I think the demise of Detroit's elm trees contributed even more to it's downfall that grafitti. But only barely. Ray in sunny Las Vegas, getting ready for a Baja hurricane.

[Bobl]

Good luck with Baja hurricane rain, Ray. Once saw a fool walk across the Boulder Highway, holding a baby, with more than two feet of flood water cascading down the street.

[Maof]

i was caught between the screen and the door of my neighbors house and being yelled at by the guy spraying the trees to get inside. if i remember correctly, it looked like an army tank with the gentleman sitting on top and rotating back and forth.

[MikeM]

Actually Ray, it's caused by a fungus that is spread by beetles, and the beetles are native to our area. The disease is called Dutch Elm because it was first identified in the Netherlands, not because it came from Europe. That's the Trump version of the story, lol.

I remember the spraying well and it was the first thing I thought of when I was diagnosed with cancer.

[Gistok]

Yup.... that's what it was... the tree spraying that caused all the cancer......

[archfan]

I had to look up the DDT wallpaper. Wow.

https://envisioningtheamericandream....ting-with-ddt/

[Gistok]

Yup archfan.... sadly the future American job growth is in the field of Oncology!

[GPCharles]

There has been a lot of research done trying to come up with a elm tree that is resistant to the disease. That last time I looked into this, the elm trees in Princeton, NJ never succumbed to the disease and they were trying to recreate that strain of elm tree.

[cman710]

For two years, I lived in a neighborhood just across the line from DC in Chevy Chase, MD. The neighborhood had been built in the 1930s, and the elm trees in the neighborhood apparently also succumbed to Dutch Elm disease. However, there was one elm tree in front of one house that the property owner managed to keep alive with some sort of yearly treatment. I thought that the property owner's dedication to that one tree was admirable!

[Gistok]

I lived on the 5900 block of Marseilles St. near Balduck Park during the die off of the Dutch Elm... and we lost 2 trees. But my neighbor 2 houses over was able to save his 2 trees by having some kind of black [[plastic looking) panels placed around each trunk about 4 ft. up from the base. Those 2 trees survived quite a while. One made it 20 years, the other 40 years after the local die off.

[Baselinepunk]

Still have one American Elm on the property. It caught Dutch's from a neighbor tree since taken down. It's sad, but we'll gut it out as long as we can. Beautiful deciduous, for sure.

[Ray1936]

Actually Ray, it's caused by a fungus that is spread by beetles, and the beetles are native to our area. The disease is called Dutch Elm because it was first identified in the Netherlands, not because it came from Europe. That's the Trump version of the story, lol.

Ah! You are correct of course. Thanks for the memory shakeup.

[Dave70]

They were cutting down elm trees that were fine too, had to be a juicy contract someone had with the city I'm sure.

[GMan]

They were cutting down elm trees that were fine too, had to be a juicy contract someone had with the city I'm sure.

Yeah I heard that complaint also. I did some work for an individual that used a self created / supposedly patented apparatus that injected a fungicide into the elm tree roots thus helping protect against infection from the beetle.
He use to curse the bucket trucks that were driving around cutting down trees that he claimed could be saved.
The injection process took a couple of hours and it was expensive. I seem to remember the Pointes had some sort of subsidy program that helped residents with the cost of the injection. Did some work out there in Birmingham also.

GMan

[mwilbert]

Actually Ray, it's caused by a fungus that is spread by beetles, and the beetles are native to our area. The disease is called Dutch Elm because it was first identified in the Netherlands, not because it came from Europe. That's the Trump version of the story, lol.

This is true but incomplete. There are elm bark beetles which are native to the US, and they do spread the disease, but the fungus that they spread is not native to the US. That is believed to be native to Asia, which is why American elms are so susceptible to the fungus, while various species of Asian elms can tolerate it. One of the ways in which people have been attempting to preserve the American elm is by crossbreeding it with Japanese elms in an attempt to obtain disease resistance while maintaining the form of the American elm, which is widely considered to be more attractive.

[MikeM]

Previous threads:

Spraying of Elm Trees in the '50s

The Great Elms Trees of Detroit...

[Gistok]

Previous threads:

Spraying of Elm Trees in the '50s

The Great Elms Trees of Detroit...

Thanks MikeM.... wow 10 years ago....

[EastsideAl]

A lot of folks tried that injection method in Indian Village. It may have bought a couple of years, but eventually all of those wonderful trees came down. I sure remember the ineffective spraying too. We were supposed to stay inside, but of course we didn't, and ran out to see the trucks. I was a kid during that Dutch Elm Disease period and among the strong early sense-memories I have of growing up in Detroit was the near-daily roar of woodchippers hacking up those elm logs.

I was at Princeton for a conference during the summer several years ago and was walking around that very beautiful campus and town feeling an inexplicable pang of nostalgia. Until it suddenly occurred to me that some places there felt like they had the same summer light as Detroit had when I was kid. Looking up, I realized that this was due to the high number of surviving elm trees there.